Talk:Latron Wraith/@comment-6540498-20140927055710/@comment-204.210.103.136-20141220230921
To put it simply, Latron Wraith has less base damage, and benefits less from Piercing Caliber than Latron Prime, due to having a lower percentage of piercing damage (~70% compared to Latron Prime's 80%), it also has less Status chance. However, to make up for this, it has a much higher crit chance, and a higher fire rate, as well as being silent. Of course, the higher firing rate and identical reload rate means that it has higher burst, but sacrifices a bit of sustained damage to get it. In the final calculations, Latron Prime comes out ahead on both burst AND sustained damage.... before you throw in the crit mods. After Point Strike and Vital Sense, Latron Prime is still winning on sustained damage, but only by a smidge, and Latron Wraith has pulled ahead by about 12% on burst damage. Ahh, you say, but what about that other rifle Crit mod, Hammer Shot? Hammer shot is considered not-worthwhile by a fair number of people, due to the fact that even on excellent crit weapons like the Latrons, and the Lanka, it only provides a damage boost of about 25% compared to the faction-specific 30% from a nice Bane mod. Well, to be honest, it's the type of mod you only put on accurate crit weapons, and why? Because crit headshots get an additional 2x multiplier on top of the normal 2x headshot multiplier. With sufficient crit chance/damage, and good headshotting capabilities, Suddenly Hammer Shot is providing closer to a 40-45% damage boost, which DESTROYS the Bane mods. To top that, even if you AREN'T a great shot, if you're fighting in the void, there simply isn't a Bane mod for that, and Hammer Shot wins again. Okay, so, After Hammer Shot, Latron Wraith is owning Latron Prime in burst, by about 16%, and is now suddenly winning on sustained damage as well, by about 2.5%. In the realm of Status Proc lust (oh yess, that sweet sweet Viral, Magnetic, Corrosive and Pierce procs, reducing health, shields, armor, and damage by massive chunks. Those lovely blast, electric, radiation and impact procs, controlling mobs into submission. Finally, those euphoric heat, toxin, and slash procs, doing massive continuous DoT...) the Latron Prime clearly gets 25% status chance per bullet, which is better than the Latron Wraith efficiency wise, but the Latron Wraith has more fire rate, meaning its procs per second are 3% higher than the Latron Primes... but suddenly you have to reload and the Latron Prime is still firing... in the end it comes out to a win for the Latron Prime, in sustained procs per second and procs per bullet. Latron Wraith takes the conciliation prize on burst procs, barely. TL;DR: Latron Prime is a bit more of a proc gun, is more ammo efficient, and will be easier to get those max DPS headshots with, due to lower fire rate. Latron Wraith is the DPS winner, in burst, and maybe in sustained, depending on whether you use Hammer Shot, and is silent, but fires so fast you'll never get that many headshots per second, even on the same target, outside of point blank range. Personally, I prefer the Latron Wraith. Ammo is never a problem on either of these guns, not even close, but the real kicker is that Latron Wraith's much-improved crit chance means that it does a more reliable amount of damage, it's pretty uncommon for you to get a no-crit shot with split chamber and the crit mods installed, whereas Latron Prime is getting one about every fifth shot. Yeah, when Latron Prime gets a lucky double crit (~14% of the time) it's flipping massive, but I personally like knowing that that level 70 heavy gunner will die in 4-5 headshots, instead of 2-7 headshots.